My Family in America since 1620 reaches back to the early years of the European presence in North America to tell how William Brewster, one of the leading Pilgrims on the Mayflower, came to America in 1620. For the author, this is not simply American history, it is his family's story, as he is a descendant of William Brewster on his mother's side of the family. Echoing the work of another ancestor, Benjamin Mayberry Prentiss, who was known for his rope-making, the author twists together the findings from historical research with the collective memory of his own family. This creates the threads of a narrative that is both personal recollection and collective history. Photographs supplement this story, illustrating the people, places, and objects that figured in the history of the author's family.

Approaching both types of history in this fashion, My Family in America since 1620 reveals how each era's events touched the life of the author's family. The reader journeys with the Carter Wagon Train from Indiana to Missouri in 1841, into the conflict of the Civil War, through the Depression, onto the battlefields of World War II, and through the highlights of the author's rise to prominence.

My Family in America since 1620 promises to tell a distinctive story of the history of the United States and of a family whose roots find their grounding in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and whose branches have grown and spread across the lands of this continent for almost four centuries.